Chandos long ago outstripped Melodiya in the depth of their
coverage of Prokofiev's music. As with so many of their
series they have produced in quantity without compromising on
quality and over very extended time-scales. Let's not forget
that one of their earliest CDs in 1986 was Järvi's
Prokofiev 6. More recently they have recorded with Järvi
an unfashionable yet blazingly ardent On
Guard for Peace. I keep expecting or is it hoping that
they will produce a disc of his neglected film music as well:
no, not Nevsky, Ivan or Kije but his 1940s scores for Lermontov
and Partisans of the Steppe. Such is the vintage
of the Chandos treasury that recordings of the 1980s and 1990s
are now emerging at a rate of knots at mid-price. This is the
latest harvest following some individual issues and the Järvi
sets of the symphonies and piano concertos.

If you have not come across the concert scenario for the film
music for Ivan the Terrible then you have a treat
in store with Järvi's fulsomely recorded version. This
sequence differs from several other versions in that there is
no narrator. Although I am not convinced by the heated and manically
driven Overture - just too fast - it does shudder with a sense
of chaos and terror which is faithful to the portrayed mood.
The Russian Sea is taken by Linda Finnie who adopts a
completely idiomatic Slavonic wobble. This contrasts with the
deep and luxurious, indeed magical, pile of the Philharmonia
Chorus. The recording is stunning with the subtle hard orchestral
underpinning for The Wedding lovingly caught beneath
the whirling delight of the chorus. Fire and Tartars
and Cannoneers aptly pick up on the violence and flame-licking
terror as well as using bells that sound as if they might be
the vast onion-cupola giants we imagine from the Eisenstein
films. At 9:26 The Storming of Kazan is the single
largest episode. It is handled with wonderful concentration
and burnished string tone. Track 11 with its hummed chorus for
Ivan's sickness is enchantingly distanced. The contrast
between the limping sinister music for Ephrosynia the poisoner
and Ivan's dear wife Anastasia is sharply chiselled. The Lady
Macbeth-like Ephrosynia's Song of the Beaver is threaded
through with her dark ambition for her simpleton son Vladimir.
The Banquet in the film is marked by the emergence of
colour in the film. In this music only version the howling whistles
around Nikita Storojev's ruthless Song of the Oprichniki
with its Old Testament and Orff-like savagery are memorable.
Ferocity and a screaming savage deckle edge to the sound add
Technicolor emphasis. The Finale takes the pulverising
counter-melody from the Overture and with the chorus lends the
piece a triumphant and towering finality that would have been
heightened had the composer had time to extend it.

You may know the piece from versions with narrator, early Melodiya
and Muti. Those who found the narration too much of a good thing
can take heart from this recording which is more than well worth
its return to availability at mid-price.

For me the main attraction in this fascinating batch of discs
is the magnificent Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary
of the October Revolution. It is here presented in its
unbowdlerised version including Stalin's speeches towards the
end. Kondrashin was forced to elide them in his first recording.
However let's not confuse politics with musical worth troubling
though the process of separating one from the other in a cantata
of this type may be. The forces used are massive and they are
used to huge effect. Loudness and awe are not of course enough.
In fact this music has a dizzying concentration that is bound
to impress and some poetry too.

The performance history of the piece is fascinating. Completed
in 1937, it was buried by the denunciations of that era until
1966 when it was performed and then recorded -against the conductor's
wishes - minus two crucial substantial episodes which set words
by Stalin. This Chandos recording which is complete, faithful
to the original schema as to instrumentation and has all sections
as written was performed in this form for the first time anywhere
outside Eastern Europe by Järvi at the RFH in 1992.

The choir is large and subdivided into two section - eight parts.
There is a super-augmented orchestra with quadruple woodwind
and eight horns alongside three augmentary instrumental groups:
six accordions or bayans, a seventeen strong windband including
six further trumpets to add to the four already in the orchestra
and a percussion ensemble with alarm bells, cannon-shot, sirens
(9:22 in Revolution tr. 6) and the kitchen sink. In the
wild fervent rumpus that is Revolution the voice of Gennadi
Rozhdestvensky rings out through a megaphone orating the words
of Lenin. One can somehow see the smoke of insurrection, feel
its sting, the howls of heightened awareness and hysteria and
the bloody fervour of the words. This is the same movement in
which the Bayan band appear. The bayans return for The Oath:
Stalin's pledge in his speech at Lenin's bierside. It too burns
with conviction - faithful to the original sentiments of the
extension of the Communist International into a spreading worldwide
alliance. It is greatly to the credit of the Philharmonia chorus
and Simon Halsey that the flame burns bright, steady and intense.
The final and tenth movement, The Constitution, again
sets Stalin's words

There are no soloists except for Rozhdestvensky and his spoken
cameo - the voice of the people speaking the words of their
hortators into the dazzling sun. Overdose on grandiloquence
and blazing fervour. In case you think this is all unremitting
grandstanding the quietly intimate silvery sheen of the strings
in Victory shines forth.

The notes are by Christopher Palmer and all the words
are there in the booklet: transliterated Russian alongside French,
German and English translations.

When this disc was first released in 1992 while not impossible
to track down full recordings of Prokofiev's third Soviet ballet
The Tale of the Stone Flower were difficult to
come by. CPO and Chandos
have put that right in style since. Even so there is a place
for this twenty-five minute sequence from Prokofiev's full-length
ballet: whooping brass, gypsy flavour, echoes of Romeo and
Juliet (how could he escape it), dark clouded tension, shrieking
tangy woodwind, the swayingly touching solo of the gypsy girl
(tr.17) and stamping, crashing fury.

Järvi forsook Glasgow in 1992 for the next disc. The War
and Peace symphonic suite was arranged by Christopher
Palmer who also wrote the notes for this disc. It serves as
a compact epitome of this grandest of epic operas. One is somehow
more aware of the psychological element here which adds sobriety
and tragic colour to the dances. The three movement suite is
helpful tracked into components so that we end up with seven
tracks in all. The May Night intermezzo is almost Tchaikovskian
in its sweet Tatiana and Juliet echoes; warm, verdant and youthful
music. The Finale catches the whirling snowstorm in a Klimtian
style that recalls Herrmann and Korngold. These are gusts not
zephyrs and the tinsel glitter is razor-edged. Next comes the
tumultuous breathless battle-scene with abrasive gallstone brass.
This rises to a triumphant finale which makes use of the Marshal
Kutuzov theme in turn recycled from Ivan the Terrible
- Storming of Kazan.

Away from the epic we move to Summer Night - the
suite from the Rossinian opera The Duenna also known
as Betrothal in a Monastery. This is based on Sheridan.
The opera was written in 1940 but the suite was made in 1950.
The music moves across five movements between a range of Romeo
and Juliet-style classical dances to evocations of warm
Ukraine summer midnights. The final scudding Dance (allegretto)
is delectable and delectably recorded.

The Russian Overture is from the years of the
composer's return to the Soviet Union. One instantly notices
a Stravinskian flavour - for me it is the tight-taut Pulcinella
rather than the claimed Petrushka. A grand romantic
sweep is also there as at 2:24. It is all perhaps a shade too
densely populated with instrumentation and invention. Grand
striding piano-decorated ideas abound towards the end with rushing
string phrases and a web of solo instrumentation. This is a
rich canvas constantly in motion. Luxury recording too and ending
in blaze of gong and percussion.

Romeo and Juliet suites: Rising 79 minutes
of Prokofiev's ballet score in three suites - the first two
at a half hour each. These are from the year after completion
of the full work. The whole ballet was staged for first time
in Brno in 1938 with Lavrosky's classic version being given
for the first time in 1940 in Leningrad. The two suites predate
these key events and gave the music concert currency three years
before the Brno theatre premiere.

Suite No. 1 balances quirky-gawky dances with drama. Järvi
and Chandos make much of the dynamic contrasts, front-to-back
perspective and chamber textures (1:21 Romeo and Juliet tr.
6) which adds greatly to this vivid presentation. I especially
enjoyed the angry edge to the strings in Death of Tybalt
ending the Suite No.1.

The Second Suite has a more symphonic-tragic aspect. It begins
with the beetling minatory blast of Montagues and Capulets
and ends with the piled high searing excoriation of Romeo
at the Tomb of Juliet. This contrasts with the flighty The
Young Juliet and Dance (vivo) and the fragile and
pointed emotion of Dance of the Antilles girls. Romeo
at Juliet before parting provides a tense central foundation
for this well structured suite.

With the war over the ballet was set for a series of new fully-staged
productions in Moscow. Prokofiev compiled a third suite which
at a concert on 8 March 1946 trail-blazed the December 1946
theatrical re-launch. It is an entertaining taster serving well
to heighten anticipation in a readily assimilable package spanning
six movements and just over 18 minutes. Järvi spins the
Aubade very fast indeed - a carousel effect which I found
just a shade heartless beside so much else that worked so well.
Still it kept Edwin Paling, the SNO leader very much on the
edge of his seat. It ends with a oh-so-slowly-dragged Death
of Juliet. This just might be too much of a good thing but
the weight of the SNO strings certainly comes across in satisfying
tonal splendour.

I note that the name of the orchestra as it existed at the time
of the recording is preferred. It is listed as the SNO not the
RSNO.

The Violin Concertos stand on either side of Prokofiev's
departure from Russia. The first, as Noel Goodwin tells us,
was orchestrated just as the Classical Symphony was being
written. Mordkovitch emphasises the fragility and delicacy of
the piece and incidentally reminds us of its later progeny:
the Walton Violin Concerto. She stands against the magical yet
now ancient Beecham-Szigeti mono version (Naxos)
but emerges more than valiantly. She is aided by a most lovely,
close yet lustrous and deep Chandos recording. This is a precise
yet yieldingly romantic version which can be placed alongside
the finest: Oistrakh
and Sitkovetsky.

The Second Concerto was premiered by Robert Soetens in Madrid
on 1 December 1935 in a deeply troubled Spain. The work lacks
the saturated fairytale romance of its predecessor. It is more
objective in mood yet still vulnerable and the central Andante
Assai is classically cool. The finale sounds more neo-classical
than usual here - at times recalling the Stravinsky concerto
with cross-cutting ideas shaded in from Romeo and Juliet.

The Violin Sonata No.1 is longer than either of the two three
movement concertos. It was premiered in Moscow in 1946 after
a long gestation period dating back to 1939. The recording here
is very much full-on as you will hear in the fittingly called
Allegro brusco (II). The delicacy and liquid endearments
of the Andante (III) look back to the diaphanous mastery
of the First Concerto. The very close-up recording nevertheless
preserves the intimacy.

There are good notes - the originals - by Noel Goodwin.

Although Järvi presided over the lion's share of the Chandos
Prokofiev, Edward Downes entered the lists for the complete
Onegin music. When the BBC were celebrating Prokofiev
and Pushkin in 1980 they broadcast an Onegin dramatisation
with Prokofiev's music. The conductor, with one of the BBC regional
studio orchestras, was Downes who also gave a broadcast talk
on the music. He has known the score for many years. It's a
neglected lyric gem and as is this recording which runs five
or so minutes over two hours. The score was published in Russia
in 1973 some 37 years after Prokofiev had finished work.

Sir Charles Johnston's translation of the Pushkin original is
in rhymed verses. For the most part the words are neatly and
sometime superbly turned. Occasionally the rhyming scheme is
too obviously laboured or one winces with a contrived consonance
but overall this is beautiful and poignant. The music has the
breath and pulse of romance indeed it races and strolls with
delight, musing in ecstasy or threaded with bitterness for tragedy.
Echoes of other scores including Romeo and Juliet are
interleaved with other inspirations. It is wonderful to have
this now at mid-price. However having this as a supplement to
the Capriccio
set where the text is spoken in Russian is best.

Timothy West is a wonderfully understated speaker who avoids
the shoals of reading a rhymed scheme. Sam West is Onegin, Niamh
Cusack as Tatyana and Dominic Mafham as Lensky. The silvery
playing of the orchestra can best be heard in scene 4. They
play under the voices but there is no sense of balance
twiddling. The two components - narration and music are achieved
with equipoise. Niamh sounds not quite young enough to be Tatyana
but this is ripe Prokofiev - at his most lyrical; his most poignant.
Rewards are yielded ceaselessly in this melodrama in sixteen
scenes. One macabre example is the harpsichord's manic gavotte
in tr. 12. If you love the emotionalism and melodic profile
of Romeo and Juliet this is a score you must hear.

The full English spoken text is in the booklet. Single width
double CD case - with 40pp booklet.

Not to be missed if you need the English version. The Russian
somehow as an additional lissom reach and squeeze on the heart.

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